When I first started telling people I was leaving the Army, I didn’t have an elevator pitch ready to trot out. I stumbled over what to say and how to say it when people asked the inevitable “So what’s next?” I knew I needed to have a succinct, snappy answer once I started interviewing for positions, but I didn’t realize how useful it would be to figure out a short personal statement before I even started job searching.

The U.S. Air Force needs a little bit of time to get its shit together, so journalists, if you could just do us a favor and stop asking us questions for like, a week or maybe a month or two, that would be great. Thanks.